“Oh, come on, you know how Rabbi Wasser can get, why did you have to challenge him that way?”
Late on the night before Yom Kippur, Sholom Wasser left the house for a walk.
When people asked Penina how she juggled so much — running a busy office, little children, wife of a rosh yeshivah — she liked to say that busy people don’t have time to worry, so they manage better.
Now, Sholom realized how true that was. He was struck by the intensity of this thought: running a yeshivah was dinei nefashos, and it would have been wiser for him to be a plumber, or a cook, or a bookkeeper like Penina was; anything but this. Why had he done it?
He left quietly, not wanting to wake anyone, and gently closed the creaky front door and headed out.
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